Thinking about what is okay to eat based on what/how much you’ve eaten today.

Resisting eating when you’re not hungry.

Resolving to recommit to eating healthy food/less food/no food, starting tomorrow. Once again.

There’s this neurotic behavior around food, because of how we want our weight to be anything from extremely thin to a weight that feels right for us.

Where does it come from?

There are the culprits that you always hear about:

• the ultra-thin fit image portrayed in the media (ubiquitous statement, but also true)
• the fact that your body is intrinsically anti-diet
• the whole, I’d rather zone out and munch while I work rather than be present and accounted for in a job that makes me miserable; comfortably numb

Then, there is the “emotional” side of eating.

It’s such a big part of the whole tangled mess. It’s really even bigger than we think it is.

It deserves an entire column unto itself:

• I deserve a reward (somehow, we make this mean food) after my hard day
• Finding yourself munching until bed time, rather than being idle and feeling
• Lunches with friends that make you act like a vacuum.
• And, maybe even the thinking about it is just a way to distract us, anyway… (more on this later)

So, of course, because of that pesky phenomenon that the more you try to lose weight, the harder it is to lose weight, we use the technique we’ve been taught for getting things done.

Set a goal! Achieve the goal through drive, hard work and pushing yourself!

In my experience, the self-discipline tactic is a FAIL: you’re kicking holes in the wall, that rebuild only stronger.

It’s the oak who uses his brute strength to not bend in the wind, and so he gets uprooted while the willow flexes and bows and survives the storm.

It’s the storm that blows and blows to get the man to take off his raincoat, but he only grabs it tighter. Then, the sun wins the bet to get the jacket off of the man by beaming his warmth; the man wants to take it off.

The self-discipline route is especially problematic because you are, essentially, declaring war on yourself. No one tells you that’s what you’re doing, but you really are.

You’re body (and its extra weight) are the enemy, and you will get rid of it by

• fighting the urge to eat
• beating yourself up when you eat more than you should
• ignoring its pleas for food, and then later…
• stuffing it (because Mother Nature always wins)

You know, we really do not think of it this way, but we are truly brutal tyrants to ourselves.

Declaring war on yourself means one thing for sure (in the words of Brooke Castillo):

You will lose.

(and since I’m kind of a smart-ass, that also makes me think: yeah, but I also definitely win, according to that logic… but whatever, imperfect metaphors, etc.)

Here’s the twist!

While we gain weight for many reasons, and use traditional methods to get the weight off, (a.k.a. the war on self — this is your brain on diets), it’s the battle that becomes our addiction.

It’s all that we think about, and therefore, we don’t have to think about anything else.

We’ve escaped that thing we don’t want to admit to ourselves. Or, that we are scared to deal with.

• Anytime that I feel myself gaining weight, I know that there is something I’m avoiding.

But, I’ve also been at this game for a while — so that may make zero sense to you at this moment. That is very okay.

101 edition goes like this:

• If you feel like you are carrying extra weight for you, listen to that instinct even if you are not technically overweight.  You are probably eating more than your body actually wants, and it’s actually more inconvenient to do this, than to stop eating when you are satisfied.

The easy answer is, oh, but I love food!

That is so interesting for me to hear, because food’s deliciousness diminishes the more of it you have. Every bite is slightly less yum. Also — you could eat more later.  Sweetie, it’s not that you just love food.

Eating slightly too much all of the time can feel comforting. Again, that invites the question, why do you need comforting?

Because — you’re scared (more on this shortly! AND, important: it’s okay/unavoidable to be scared).

The one thing you really don’t want to talk about.

This is why you feel heavier than YOU really should be — you’re looking for a bogy to distract you.

And, guess what? Your body knows how to get your attention: I’ll always notice when I am gaining weight.

Your extra weight is the exact amount of self-discovery, self-care and self-work (for lack of better terms) that you need right now. Once you’ve done your personal work, your weight will be gone (for real).

If this all feels confusing, that is okay, too — there is such a spectrum of where we are right now with connecting to our appetites, focusing on our weight, and finding the right way to handle it.

When I start feeling like I’m gaining weight, I check in with my feelings. I do this by monitoring my appetite (which you can learn in my Guerilla Weight Loss class — starts July 20, and as of this post 5 spots left) to reconnect with myself.

I usually find fear.

In the beginning, it was this kind of fear:

• Fear of how big these feelings I was avoiding might be
• Fear that I wouldn’t be able to handle what I was avoiding — or, worse, get fatter
• What if I’m avoiding something truly terrible! Ahhhhhhh!
• And, what if my fears are all really true! I better ignore them so that I stay safe

What I’ve learned is this: my feels come from me. They come from inside of me — quite literally, they are vibrations in my nervous system.

The only way out of a feeling is to feel it.  Whatever you resist (or kick holes in) persists. When you’re a willow in the wind, or sunshine on my back (allowing the feeling to be, give it space, let it enter this realm), then it moves through you like a wave.

In fact, most emotions last 90 seconds (which is also the amount of time that it takes for a woman giving birth to have a contraction). Interesting.

(Also — did you know that the human body has the same ratio of salt to water as does the ocean?  I love stuff like that. No clue what it all means.)

Your emotions are also things that are not going anywhere until they are all felt. We can eat and obsess to avoid them, but they will lay waiting under the additional layer of stuff to deal with that we’ve just dumped on top of the unfelt emotion.

Here’s the last thing: your emotions are valid and real. They are also the product of what you are thinking.

And while emotions must be embraced to be free from them, your thoughts? Those you can change.

There is a thought behind every emotion.

And, the way out of a thought is to question it.

This is the most successful method I’ve found around emotional eating that actually makes long term progress.

This is how I deal with emotional eating whenever I notice that I’m beginning to focus on what I’m eating (or my weight).

It gets a LOT easier with time, because when you deal with emotions as they come up, instead of stuffing them down and having to deal with 2 decades of fear and anger in one stretch, it’s not so bad. Honestly.

This is like getting to the root of the problem — which, you never have to do. You can actually just let yourself feel your emotions, and stop there. That is more than enough — that’s great.

Whatever your choice, there’s no rush.

You can do stuff now, or wait until you feel more ready.

No wrong answers. No wrong moves.

Your wonderful, and if you want to heal this, you will.

You don’t want what you can’t have.

And, I want you to feel good in your body. So, that’s what you get.

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